SALVATION - HOW TO SPEND ETERNITY IN HEAVEN
God created man, in His own image, to have an intimate relationship with him, based on man's personal choice. When Adam and Eve sinned, they accepted the lie of the devil as truth and ignored what God had told them before, breaking the only requirement that God had asked of them. This "sin" created separation between God and man.
We have the huge privilege to live with God again through Jesus Christ, The Son of God paid for the sin of all mankind by giving His life on the cross. Jesus became human, being born through a virgin. He lived within the limits of a human body, facing all we face, but He never sinned! Jesus' life, as we see it presented from different angles in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), is the perfect model for us to follow.
After the Holy Spirit convicts a person of sin and reveals the truth that Jesus Christ is the son of God, there comes a moment of choice. Each person is free to accept this truth and to desire to have Jesus as their Lord and Savior, beginning to live a new life or to reject it and continue to live the sinful life, without Jesus. Obeying God is the most beneficial to us, not to God.
The Lord desires to have a people that will be His for eternity. For that to happen, He gave His Son to pay the penalty for sin, in our place, so that every man who believes in Jesus to “not perish but have everlasting life.” For us, salvation, makes the difference between eternal life in perfect joy, love and happiness in Heaven, in God's presence instead of eternal death in hell where God is totally and forever absent, and where there is total hate, pain, suffering, sadness, darkness and everlasting burning fire.
The peak of God's love, was reached when he sent His beloved Son to pay the wages of sin, through His death. Because Jesus Christ died in our place, our sins are not just forgiven, but they are forgotten, erased from God's records, washed by the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross.
What should be done for Jesus' sacrifice to become real for people and their sins to be washed away and forgiven?
Jesus died for all people, so everyone can have the opportunity to return to Father God. But only those who believe in their heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He died for their sins, He was resurrected from the death by Father God, and who invite Him to become Lord over their lives, will receive the forgiveness and will make it unto salvation.
Let's have a closer look at the tenth verse. Righteousness follows the act of believing with the heart. The term “righteousness” means “the quality of being morally right or justifiable, sinless, purity.” So, repenting and receiving the forgiveness of sins by way of the Holy Spirit, turns a person into a pure and born-again, new person in Christ. This can only be achieved by believing that the sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, forgives one's sins.
The verse goes on by saying: “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Jesus also said, that “For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). We all know that our talk is the result of what we have in our heart. What we love, what we like, what we desire, and also what bothers or worries us, in other words all that is on our mind will direct how we will speak and whenever anyone starts know us, they find out pretty soon all of the above. If our hearts are full of love for Jesus, we will share our love for Him, with others. And that is exactly what we should do. By sharing our love and faith in the Lord, we continue our transformation into God's image and we will be more and more mature in our inner man. We are called to share the Good News of the Gospel to all mankind, so that they too, will have the opportunity to choose life over death.
By confessing with our own mouth we are strengthening our faith, because we were created to believe information that is spoken by our own voices the fastest, faster than anything we hear from other sources. The more we share with others about Jesus and God's Word, the more the faith we have in our heart, and are strengthened.
Just repeating the sinner's prayer, by someone else during an enthusiastic crusade or revival service, or even by a moment of impulse, while the person who does it is not truly convicted of sin and not really giving their life to Christ, won't save anybody. The saved person is one who was truly born-again, from the incorruptible seed of God's word (1 Peter 1:23). This happens by the work of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the person, in the inner man, the heart, which becomes completely new.
Jesus told to Nicodemus, that without being born again, nobody will make it to Heaven.
The one who is born again, knows it. The work that Holy Spirit does in one's heart is a unique and great experience and it cannot be compared with anything else. When I write “heart” - I am not referring to the physical organ that pumps the blood into the human body, but to the word used in the Bible too, which is the Greek word “kardia” that is the center of will and intentions, the inner man. The peace that floods the “new born in Christ” is beyond all past experiences that the person ever had so far.
If you never experienced this yet, is not too late to ask God to forgive your sins and to ask Jesus to come for real into your heart and rule your life.
Many believe that Jesus can be their Savior, without being their Lord. But Jesus can not become one's Savior if He is not Lord also. If the new converted person is not allowing Jesus to rule their life, the person will never change and will continue to live for self and not for God. We all know that we do not make perfect leaders in all the areas of our own lives. We have so many instances to prove that. We have all faced situations when we knew better; that later we would regret the decision, and yet we still did it. And of course we paid the price. As humans we are limited by how much we know and can do in any area of life, so even as leaders over our own lives we have lots of limitations and failures.
Jesus is God, so He is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent.
Only by having Him ruling on the throne of our lives, asking His advice and then following it, we will live victorious lives and we will end our journey on the earth in the arms of our Heavenly Father.
Admitting our "humanity" to God is not a sign of being weak, on the contrary is a fair, honest and a very necessary act in our walk with Jesus. And it takes courage to do it.
God is not forcing us to do good or to follow Him. We will continue to have our free will, even after being born again. The Holy Spirit will make us aware of sin, to help us stop, repent and not repeat it again, but it is our choice to obey Him or not.
Man is a spirit that has a soul and dwells in a physical body. The mind, will and emotions are the soul. Our spirit, the inner man is the part that is born again and is perfect. But the soul and body will continue to be the same as before being born again, and it is up to us to be willing to change, asking Holy Spirit to help us.
Only by studying the Word of God, asking and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, we will be able to renew our mind, to change the way we think, in all the areas of life and of course, the way we relate to other people. Love and forgiveness replaces hatred and unforgiveness. Peace and joy are replace stress, worry and fear. The confidence in God's love and care is keeps us strong and calm.
Christians are called to have fellowship and unity with one another and it is wonderful if you can become part of a church that preaches the Bible truth, or of a Bible study group, where having fellowship with other true believers, who live what they preach, can help you grow into spiritual maturity. I encourage you to not receive any teachings that you cannot find in the Bible (Every doctrine, or idea must be supported by minimum two or three verses in the context they are written in the Bible, as Jesus Himself says in John 8:17).
Even what you read on this website, check with the Bible. Over the years, practicing this "double checking-all-with-God's-Word" and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, has kept me on the good path and spared me from believing false teachings. In time you will learn to listen to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, as He will warn you about what is wrong and will help you stay on the right path with Christ.
Maybe you already had a time when you sincerely repented of sin, but you couldn't give it all to God and slowly, bit by bit, you went back to the old habits and sins. Jesus still loves you and He is ready to offer you another chance, no matter what kind of lies the enemy is whispering in your ear, trying to keep you from being saved. The sooner you ask Jesus to help you return to Him, the better. Jesus died on the cross in our places. He did all that had to be done and now it is up to you to get the benefits of His sacrifice.
The life lived with Jesus, in the light of His Truth and in His presence, is the only one worth living. The world can offer only temporary satisfactions, followed later by regret, the bitter taste of guilt and huge emptiness.
There is so much freedom in knowing that Jesus already paid for all our sins and as long as we keep Him Lord over our lives and live in obedience to Him, nobody and nothing can rob us of our salvation (John 10:29). We do the good deeds, because our heart is changed and we want to live to please God, not to gain our salvation. We are saved by grace, through faith, not by deeds! It is God's gift got us! Thank You Dear Lord!
- Isaiah 59:1-2 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.
We have the huge privilege to live with God again through Jesus Christ, The Son of God paid for the sin of all mankind by giving His life on the cross. Jesus became human, being born through a virgin. He lived within the limits of a human body, facing all we face, but He never sinned! Jesus' life, as we see it presented from different angles in all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), is the perfect model for us to follow.
After the Holy Spirit convicts a person of sin and reveals the truth that Jesus Christ is the son of God, there comes a moment of choice. Each person is free to accept this truth and to desire to have Jesus as their Lord and Savior, beginning to live a new life or to reject it and continue to live the sinful life, without Jesus. Obeying God is the most beneficial to us, not to God.
- John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”
The Lord desires to have a people that will be His for eternity. For that to happen, He gave His Son to pay the penalty for sin, in our place, so that every man who believes in Jesus to “not perish but have everlasting life.” For us, salvation, makes the difference between eternal life in perfect joy, love and happiness in Heaven, in God's presence instead of eternal death in hell where God is totally and forever absent, and where there is total hate, pain, suffering, sadness, darkness and everlasting burning fire.
The peak of God's love, was reached when he sent His beloved Son to pay the wages of sin, through His death. Because Jesus Christ died in our place, our sins are not just forgiven, but they are forgotten, erased from God's records, washed by the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross.
What should be done for Jesus' sacrifice to become real for people and their sins to be washed away and forgiven?
- Romans 10:9-10,17 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Jesus died for all people, so everyone can have the opportunity to return to Father God. But only those who believe in their heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He died for their sins, He was resurrected from the death by Father God, and who invite Him to become Lord over their lives, will receive the forgiveness and will make it unto salvation.
Let's have a closer look at the tenth verse. Righteousness follows the act of believing with the heart. The term “righteousness” means “the quality of being morally right or justifiable, sinless, purity.” So, repenting and receiving the forgiveness of sins by way of the Holy Spirit, turns a person into a pure and born-again, new person in Christ. This can only be achieved by believing that the sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, forgives one's sins.
The verse goes on by saying: “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Jesus also said, that “For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). We all know that our talk is the result of what we have in our heart. What we love, what we like, what we desire, and also what bothers or worries us, in other words all that is on our mind will direct how we will speak and whenever anyone starts know us, they find out pretty soon all of the above. If our hearts are full of love for Jesus, we will share our love for Him, with others. And that is exactly what we should do. By sharing our love and faith in the Lord, we continue our transformation into God's image and we will be more and more mature in our inner man. We are called to share the Good News of the Gospel to all mankind, so that they too, will have the opportunity to choose life over death.
By confessing with our own mouth we are strengthening our faith, because we were created to believe information that is spoken by our own voices the fastest, faster than anything we hear from other sources. The more we share with others about Jesus and God's Word, the more the faith we have in our heart, and are strengthened.
Just repeating the sinner's prayer, by someone else during an enthusiastic crusade or revival service, or even by a moment of impulse, while the person who does it is not truly convicted of sin and not really giving their life to Christ, won't save anybody. The saved person is one who was truly born-again, from the incorruptible seed of God's word (1 Peter 1:23). This happens by the work of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the person, in the inner man, the heart, which becomes completely new.
Jesus told to Nicodemus, that without being born again, nobody will make it to Heaven.
- John 3:3-5 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
The one who is born again, knows it. The work that Holy Spirit does in one's heart is a unique and great experience and it cannot be compared with anything else. When I write “heart” - I am not referring to the physical organ that pumps the blood into the human body, but to the word used in the Bible too, which is the Greek word “kardia” that is the center of will and intentions, the inner man. The peace that floods the “new born in Christ” is beyond all past experiences that the person ever had so far.
If you never experienced this yet, is not too late to ask God to forgive your sins and to ask Jesus to come for real into your heart and rule your life.
Many believe that Jesus can be their Savior, without being their Lord. But Jesus can not become one's Savior if He is not Lord also. If the new converted person is not allowing Jesus to rule their life, the person will never change and will continue to live for self and not for God. We all know that we do not make perfect leaders in all the areas of our own lives. We have so many instances to prove that. We have all faced situations when we knew better; that later we would regret the decision, and yet we still did it. And of course we paid the price. As humans we are limited by how much we know and can do in any area of life, so even as leaders over our own lives we have lots of limitations and failures.
Jesus is God, so He is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent.
Only by having Him ruling on the throne of our lives, asking His advice and then following it, we will live victorious lives and we will end our journey on the earth in the arms of our Heavenly Father.
Admitting our "humanity" to God is not a sign of being weak, on the contrary is a fair, honest and a very necessary act in our walk with Jesus. And it takes courage to do it.
God is not forcing us to do good or to follow Him. We will continue to have our free will, even after being born again. The Holy Spirit will make us aware of sin, to help us stop, repent and not repeat it again, but it is our choice to obey Him or not.
Man is a spirit that has a soul and dwells in a physical body. The mind, will and emotions are the soul. Our spirit, the inner man is the part that is born again and is perfect. But the soul and body will continue to be the same as before being born again, and it is up to us to be willing to change, asking Holy Spirit to help us.
- Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Only by studying the Word of God, asking and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, we will be able to renew our mind, to change the way we think, in all the areas of life and of course, the way we relate to other people. Love and forgiveness replaces hatred and unforgiveness. Peace and joy are replace stress, worry and fear. The confidence in God's love and care is keeps us strong and calm.
Christians are called to have fellowship and unity with one another and it is wonderful if you can become part of a church that preaches the Bible truth, or of a Bible study group, where having fellowship with other true believers, who live what they preach, can help you grow into spiritual maturity. I encourage you to not receive any teachings that you cannot find in the Bible (Every doctrine, or idea must be supported by minimum two or three verses in the context they are written in the Bible, as Jesus Himself says in John 8:17).
Even what you read on this website, check with the Bible. Over the years, practicing this "double checking-all-with-God's-Word" and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, has kept me on the good path and spared me from believing false teachings. In time you will learn to listen to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, as He will warn you about what is wrong and will help you stay on the right path with Christ.
Maybe you already had a time when you sincerely repented of sin, but you couldn't give it all to God and slowly, bit by bit, you went back to the old habits and sins. Jesus still loves you and He is ready to offer you another chance, no matter what kind of lies the enemy is whispering in your ear, trying to keep you from being saved. The sooner you ask Jesus to help you return to Him, the better. Jesus died on the cross in our places. He did all that had to be done and now it is up to you to get the benefits of His sacrifice.
The life lived with Jesus, in the light of His Truth and in His presence, is the only one worth living. The world can offer only temporary satisfactions, followed later by regret, the bitter taste of guilt and huge emptiness.
There is so much freedom in knowing that Jesus already paid for all our sins and as long as we keep Him Lord over our lives and live in obedience to Him, nobody and nothing can rob us of our salvation (John 10:29). We do the good deeds, because our heart is changed and we want to live to please God, not to gain our salvation. We are saved by grace, through faith, not by deeds! It is God's gift got us! Thank You Dear Lord!
MORE VERSES ABOUT SALVATION AND FORGIVENESS OF SIN
- Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
- John 10:27-30 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.”
- Romans 8:11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
- Titus 3:4-6 But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
- James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
- 1 Timothy 2:3-4 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
- Mark16:15-18 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
- Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
- Acts 2:36-42 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
- Acts 16:30-34 And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household.
- 1 John 3:5 And you know that He [Jesus] was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.
- 1 John 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
- Revelation 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.
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